


Heritage

by Ladycat



Category: Angel: the Series, due South
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Gen, idek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:11:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“A kid?” Ray asks.  He’s still half-leaning on Fraser, Dief pressed between their legs, and his surprise sends a current through all three of them.  “You’re nothing but a kid.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heritage

“Ray,” Fraser says.

Ray ignores him, already trotting towards the sounds. “Do you hear that? I think there’s something... ” Laziest man alive when it comes to housework or bureaucracy, but show him—or in this case, let him hear—a fight and Ray can’t say no.

“Ray. Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray—”

Ray whirls around, eyes just a little bit crazy. “What?” he snaps.

“I don’t think we should go in there.”

“Why not? C’mon, Fraser, normally it’s you running into some dark, shadowed alley where somebody may be in distress.” Ray gives him his cockiest grin. “And you don’t have a gun or a badge.”

A sore spot. Lately, Ray has been increasingly unhappy that Fraser is always first on the scene and therefore makes the connection with the victim.

The last several victims, in point of fact. All very young, very beautiful female victims.

A sickening thud comes from the alley and the conversation is put on hold. Fraser stays precisely one step behind Ray as they creep into the alley, gun first, with Deifenbaker curiously silent behind them. A short cry. Something snarls, deep and guttural—and then there’s a laugh.

“Crazy person?” Ray whispers. He’s moving more slowly.

“No.” There’s no insanity in that laughter, but then, joy is often mistaken for such. “Perhaps you would be so kind, Ray, as to cover me?”

“Wha? Oh, yeah, I. Yeah.” They switch places quickly, ending up so close that their jackets brush together noisily. “You sure, Fras?”

“Shh.”

It isn’t a long alley, but it takes forever to mince the few steps necessary to find the join where one alley meshes with another, spiderwebbing through the city like a sunken echo, another darker, more complicated means of scuttling from one place to another.

Something large and dangerous flies through the air.

Fraser ducks, pulling Ray down with him while Dief lets out a short, sharp warning bark. Whatever it is—there is nothing human about the bipedal creature scrambling to its feet, dark and overhanging with skin that cannot ever resemble clothes—snarls back in wordless defiance. Fraser’s heart clenches. If it goes after Dief—

But then Ray is crying out again, falling backwards with an _oof_ as something small and silver-gilt rushes past them both, hauling the—the _creature_ , Fraser decides—back up to it’s backward-bending knees, head-butts it, and then there’s a complicated move that’s half thrust, half twist with something Fraser cannot see.

The resulting wail is familiar, though. Fraser pushes off the wall he’s plastered against and goes to help Ray to his feet.

“What,” Ray says, softly, “the hell is that?”

Fraser says nothing. He keeps his eyes on the figure where it stands, weight shifting back and forth as it decides its next course of action. There are enough shadows, grey and whispering, from clouds racing across the night sky that if it wanted, it could vanish without a trace. Fraser knows instinctively that he’ll never be able to track this—it. He’s a good hunter, one of the best in his region. But he tracks animals, men when forced to.

Not this.

Finally, a decision is reached. A foot steps out into a pool of dim, yellowed street-light, then another. Jeans are exposed next, dirty and hanging loosely around skinny legs; a torn shirt, a smudged, dirty face.

“A kid?” Ray asks. He’s still half-leaning on Fraser, Dief pressed between their legs, and his surprise sends a current through all three of them. “You’re nothing but a kid.”

The kid—a more gross misnomer Fraser’s never come across—quirks a smile with his thin, small mouth. “Sorry about that.” His eyes are locked on Fraser’s. “Didn’t think he’d be so... feisty.”

“No, not a problem,” Fraser says. “Thank you kindly for taking care of it.”

The boy shrugs, a loose, casual gesture that covers the way his eyes watch everything. Old, old eyes, grey and lost to worlds Fraser’s seen friends enter but had never found a doorway himself. He’s never really looked for one.

“Sure. Chicago’s a great town, isn’t it?” He produces a smile so brightly innocent that for a second, Fraser thinks he’s imagining things. “I’m here on break, school, you know, visiting with some friends. I think they’re at a bar, I should probably go meet up with them.”

Ray is already relaxing. “Yeah, you do that. This isn’t really a safe part of town, you know. Fights down here aren’t the kind college kids usually get into.”

“Thanks. Hey, sorry about that. Really.”

Dief makes a low, grumbling moan and Fraser looks down in time to see a vaguely humanoid shape turn green, then grey, vanishing into a puddle of sludge that looks no different from the various other puddles that lay over the concrete. “It’s no problem,” he repeats, softly.

When he looks up, the boy is still watching him. Saying something, maybe, about hunters and prey and how there are many things that threaten a city. Things that up north, at home, only the shamans could fight.

But everything is different here.

“Actually,” he hears himself saying, “Ray and I were just about to go to dinner. Perhaps you would be so kind as to accompany us?”

Ray won’t like that— _doesn’t_ like it, with great vocal dismay—but Fraser ignores that. He sees those grey eyes flash, a hint of a smile the only answer he really needs. “My name is Connor,” the boy says. “I’ll be in town another couple of days. Maybe then.”

“I’d like that,” Fraser says, but he’s talking to empty air.

Eventually, Ray says, “So what the hell _was_ that?”

“I have no idea.” Ray can’t understand, really. He thinks in terms of cops and robbers, of mob bosses and a population that usually ungrateful for the help they receive. Once, Fraser hunted a feral wolverine. He suspects that’s not nearly enough training for what Connor goes after. “It doesn’t matter.”

“We could go after him, maybe, arrest him—”

 _For protecting us?_ Instead, Fraser says, “He’s done nothing wrong, Ray, and you know I promised Turnbull I wouldn’t be out for very long.”

Ray gives him a look but, eventually, shrugs and runs with it. It’s one of his more endearing qualities and as they amble into the night, Fraser tries very hard to ignore the way Diefenbaker is still on full alert.


End file.
